Bosses, have I got an idea for you: Don't pay your best employees more, don't ease out your least productive workers, and for crying out loud, never fire anyone, not even for the most blatant misconduct on the job.
Don't pay your best employees more, that should be the mantra everyone should use against unions of all stripes. If you don't reward excellence, excellence will be rare and mediocrity the norm. Let's not focus on the sub-par, let's focus on the excellent. What motivates someone to be excellent? Certainly some of excellence comes from within the individual, but if the organization does not reward the individual for excellence, the person may not decide to excel. What's worse, in a system that doesn't reward excellence, the mediocre may shun someone who chooses to do more. So if you want to do a great job and be an overachiever, it will win you enemies and no greater reward than your own personal satisfaction. Unions foster this sort of environment.
The restrictions on firing teachers are defended as a means of protecting teachers from favoritism. But if schools and principals had to compete, good teachers would be protected by competition itself: If a principal's job depends on having good people working for him, he won't sacrifice it to give a favored incompetent a job he can't do.
Here's the point; a union is not necessary when competing schools are in the market for the best teaching talent, the price for teachers goes up. The market is not the enemy for teachers, it's their friend. Unfortunately, unions don't see it this way. The unions want the power to negotiate prices in the hands of the few and not in the hands of the many.
How has the union responded to Stossel's transgression of criticizing them? Poorly at best:
"Stossel needs a lesson: Video tapes of the John Stossel segment on 20/20 that bashed high school teachers and trashed the Unions (singling out the UFT) were distributed at our last Chapter Leader meeting ... It is infuriating ...The UFT needs your support on this. Hold a chapter meeting, show the video, get the signatures ... We will be delivering them at the rally in front of the ABC-TV studios on March 8. Show some pride in our efforts and fight back against the disrespect shown to us on national television. We work too hard and do too much good to let them paint us as the source of all problems and evil in the schools. Please stand up for us."
As always, Miss Dennis has valid criticisms of Stossel and also of the teacher's union. Criticizing the union should not necessarily be seen as criticizing teachers in general, it's not the same thing.
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